We aim to reduce biofilm produced by bacterial cells to allow for a more effective treatment using antibiotics.

Can you feel the plaque on your teeth?

Are you tired of short food durability?

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Both are due
to the sticky slime layer that bacteria produce. In addition to this, slime-creating bacteria have huge consequences for our society – both economical and health related. Among other things, they cause

What if it’s possible to reduce the creation of this nasty and potentially
harmful slime?

The slimy layer as described above is called biofilm. We, the iGEM NTNU 2018 team aim to reduce bacteria’s ability to produce biofilm by inhibiting their quorum sensing
mechanism.

Bacteria communicate and
detect the number of cells in the bacterial population with a
mechanism called quorum sensing. When the number exceeds a certain
threshold, the bacteria initiates the production of biofilm
components. This can hugely
impact our environment as hostile bacteria get increased
survivability and aggressiveness in biofilm.

This can be done by repressing the luxS-gene which is partly responsible for the biofilm
development. By creating a CRISPR-system we target this specific gene which will be repressed, and
prevent or greatly reduce the formation of biofilm.